St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Strathroy, Ontario

More Than Just A Show

October 30, 2011 – Reformation Sunday

We put a lot of stock in appearances.

There’s a wealth of evidence for that statement that applies to today.  Let’s start with the fact that today is Reformation Sunday, when we remember that, 494 years ago tomorrow, a German monk by the name of Martin Luther posted his 95 complaints against the practices of the Church as allowed and even encouraged by the pope in Rome.  I’m not going to go into these complaints and arguments today except to say that they were mostly railing against practices that had been put in place to help pay for the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica.  The Church of God on Earth could not just be content with a large building in Rome, thought the pope;  no, it had to be the largest and most beautifully ornate “church” that had ever been and, indeed, probably ever will be.  One of the great theological debates over the last thousand years revolves around the poverty of Christ, and whether or not His perceived poverty as a man should extend to the Church as an institution.  Luther’s complaints were not heeded by the Church’s authorities, but were heard by various political figures in Germany and in other parts of central Europe, and they began a protest against the practices he had identified.  Within twenty years, those who had joined the protest side were known as “protestants,” a word which was eventually capitalized and became an official name – Protestant.  We in the Presbyterian Church, however, truly prefer another distinction, in that we belong to the branch of Protestantism that calls itself “Reformed.”  Luther didn’t want to break up the Catholic Church;  he wanted to change it.  He wanted to re-form and re-think its practices to bring them more in line with what the Bible said that God wanted to see from His people on earth.  We are Reformed, and yet we are constantly re-forming – God reveals new things and new truths to us every day, if we’re open to them, and as we change in response to these new things and these new truths, we are, as I say, re-forming.

But to go back to the issue of putting stock in appearances, one thing that jumped right out at me lately is an ad for Bluewater Surgery in Sarnia that gets a lot of play on the radio – according to the ad, now that you’ve had children, ladies, you’re ugly, but if you pay Bluewater Surgery several thousand dollars, they’ll make you look beautiful, and if you look beautiful you’ll feel beautiful!  The first time I heard that, I found myself remember Billy Crystal’s old Saturday Night Live character, Fernando – he was a talk-show host who would be interviewing the guest star of the week and always included the phrase, “Joo look mah-velous!”  Interviews would end with a variation on, “Remember my friends, don’t be a shnook / it’s not how you feel, it’s how you look!”  Twenty-five years have passed since that first aired, and I wonder if there isn’t more stock in that phrase now than when he first said it!

In the Church, though, or in Scripture, we can go back to what Luther was talking about, what Paul was talking about, what Jesus was talking about, what Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were all talking about, which is that appearance is not as important as action.  A thing has to do what it’s supposed to do.  Jesus said that salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness it’s not good for anything.  Something may look like salt, but if it doesn’t act like salt, it’s not worth anything.  And He said that the same is true for people.

I was reading about something like this in a book I read recently.  You’ve probably heard of the recent movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt;  the book actually came out in 2003, and talked about the 2002 baseball season through the eyes of the Oakland A’s, and most especially the eyes of the A’s’ General Manager, Billy Beane.  The General Manager in baseball is responsible for personnel decisions, from the big league team all the way down to the lowest Rookie Ball league in the farm system.  It was Billy Beane’s job to build a competitive team for the major league level from whatever pieces he could acquire here or there, either from other big league teams or coming up through the farm system.

The catch:  in 2002, he had a player budget of $40 million, which, while it may sound like a lot to you and me, was peanuts to the rest of the league.  Oakland had the second-lowest payroll in baseball.  On a day when the New York Yankees came to town, it was pointed out to author Michael Lewis that the batters in the numbers two, three and four spots in the Yankee order made between them a total of $36 million.  For three batters!  The entire Yankee payroll was in the neighbourhood of $125 million!  Obviously, the old way of buying talent wasn’t going to be able to stack up in Oakland.

So, Billy Beane forced his organization to start looking at different things.  Old scouts who tried to ‘go with their gut’ and use old standards of observation and judgement found themselves being brushed aside in favour of computerized statistics – the subtitle of the book is The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.  The specific statistic that Billy Beane was looking for was on-base percentage.  A player’s batting average only measures how a batter is doing when he makes contact with the ball – how many times he got a hit over how many times he hit the ball and either got on base or got out.  Walks aren’t counted in your average, as it was thought that the batter shouldn’t get “credit” for a pitcher’s “mistakes”.  Beane decided that he wanted walks to be counted, and the new team philosophy had, as point #1, “Every batter shall consider himself to be as a leadoff batter.”  A leadoff batter’s job is to get to first base – by walk or by hit, his job is to get to first base.  If you have four players get to first base in one inning, the odds are very good that one of them has scored.  It may sound like a lower expectation – the game is won by runs scored, but your main job is just to get to first base?  But this was how he was going to approach the game and select players.

(By the way:  baseball trivia!  Who was the last batter to hit .400 in the major leagues?  Ted Williams in 1941, and he hit .406.  In 456 at-bats, he got 185 hits, which is phenomenal all on its own.  However, he also drew 147 walks!  His on-base percentage was .553, meaning that more than half of the time when Ted Williams came to the plate that year, he was headed down to first base or farther.  His lifetime OBP is a major league record .484.  I don’t think anyone will ever come close to that… but I digress!)

Cutting to the chase here, Billy Beane ended up choosing players that didn’t “look like ballplayers” to get the job done.  If a short, fat outfielder with an indifferent glove showed that he could get to first base on a regular basis, Billy wanted him.  If a pitcher used his defence efficiently and didn’t just go for the strikeout all the time, Billy wanted him.  This is how he ended up with a retread catcher at first base, a pudgy outfielder who did his job, and a relief pitcher with an 84 mph fastball.  The catcher had wrecked a nerve in his arm and couldn’t throw, but he could bat and took walks like no one else.  The pudgy outfielder did the same job and got to first base very regularly indeed.  The pitcher was the greatest mystery to the scouts, as if a fastball wasn’t over 90, they didn’t want to see it.  This pitcher, though, by the name of Chad Bradford, had what they call a submarine delivery that put wicked action on the ball, and most of his pitches that were hit turned into ground balls.  They didn’t look like ballplayers according to the scouts, but they did their jobs as the front office demanded of them, and were praised for it.

Now, what was the final result?  Well, in 2002, Oakland won 103 games, almost a franchise record.  In the middle of that was a 20-game winning streak, eclipsing a record that had stood for more than seventy years.  The season was a success, but in the playoffs they tanked, losing 3 games to 2 in the division series – what occurred over a 162-game season schedule couldn’t necessarily be duplicated in the short-series playoff format.  In the decade since Moneyball was published, though, other teams have taken on a similar approach, and all of baseball is now populated by players who, as recently as fifteen years ago, probably would have never been considered as major league stars.  You use what does the job, and not just because it looks like it should do the job.

 

This is what Jesus was saying to His disciples in our Scripture reading for today.  He was pointing to the traditions of the Pharisees – the fringes that they had on their garments, the phylacteries that they wore, the other traditions that they held to, many of which were mandated by Scripture – and was basically saying that those traditions were failing to do their job.  They had become little more than a show, and were failing to accomplish the purpose that God had intended for them.

 

The “fringes” that He mentions are the tassels that are supposed to be on the corners of their prayer shawls, each with a single blue thread running through them – these were supposed to call to the minds of those who saw them the commandments that they were to obey.  “Phylacteries” are little boxes containing scrolls with Scripture verses on them – they are bound to the wrist or tied to the forehead, and there are supposedly proper knots and methods for wrapping that are considered ‘acceptable’.  A good Pharisee probably had a mezuzah on his doorpost, containing a scroll with the phrase Shema, Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehhod (Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One…).  All of these were supposed to be reminders of the glory and blessings and grace of God, and how we are supposed to show it because we’ve all been blessed by God.

But, as I say, it had become apparent to Jesus that the traditions had become more important than what had moved the tradition in the first place – the fringes weren’t just simple tassels any longer, and the phylacteries weren’t just simple boxes;  they were being made to be seen and admired.  Symbols have to do a job – as beautiful as they are, they can’t just be.  Traditions have to mean something – they can’t just be.  Because people have a job to do – they can’t just be.

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day had gotten caught up in the symbols and the actions and had forgotten the meaning behind the symbols and the actions.  They were caught up in a web of titles and pride, and their vanity was the cause of many points of friction between them and Jesus, and this vanity and pride ended up putting them directly into Jesus’ firing line.  Consider this thought in light of a description of a vain man that was authored by William Penn in 1863 in his book entitled Fruits of Solitude.

A vain man is a nauseous creature:  he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it ever so good or deserving.  It is I, at every turn, that does this or can do that.  And as he abounds in his comparisons, so he is sure to give himself the better of everybody else; according to the proverb, “All his geese are swans.” They are certainly to be pitied that can be so much mistaken at home.  And yet I have sometimes thought that such people are, in a sort, happy, that nothing can put [them] out of countenance with themselves, though they neither have, nor merit, other people’s.  But at the same time, one would wonder they should not feel the blows they give themselves, or get from others, from this intolerable and ridiculous temper; nor show any concern at that which makes others blush for, as we as at them viz. their unreasonable assurance.  To be a man’s own fool is bad enough;  but the vain man is everybody’s.  This silly disposition comes of a mixture of ignorance, confidence, and pride:  and as there is more or less of the last, so it is more or less offensive, or entertaining.  And yet, perhaps, the worst part of this vanity is its unteachableness.  Tell it anything, and it has known it long ago; and outruns information and instruction, or else proudly puffs at it.  Whereas the greatest understandings doubt most, are readiest to learn and least pleased with themselves;  this, with nobody else.  For though they stand on higher ground, and so see further than their neighbours, they are yet humbled by their prospect, since it shows them something so much higher above their reach.

And truly then it is that sense shines with the greatest beauty when it is fed in humility.

 

 

Humility is found in realizing that we have a job to do, and it’s not necessarily a job that we set for ourselves.

Humility is found in the realization that our way may not be God’s way or if it was God’s way, perhaps it is no longer.

Humility is found when we accept that something has to change, that the old ways may not be doing it any more, and that new directions and new observations, “new eyes,” may be needed in order to see them… and I’m not talking about new people, necessarily, but the potential for new eyes in old folks!  You don’t have to be very old to get tradition-bound – tomorrow is Hallowe’en, and every kid wants to go out for Hallowe’en because they get to dress as a monster or something cute and they get candy!  We ingrain that tradition in them as soon as they’re old enough to walk, for Pete’s sake!

But the Session is going to be hearing about something on Tuesday that has been worked around quite a bit by the Presbytery over the past while.  You’ve possibly heard me referring to the “Season of Prayer and Discernment” that we’ve been undertaking as a Presbytery – we’ve been doing this partly because we realized that we have some congregations within our bounds that are going to be asking themselves the hardest question a congregation can ever ask themselves:  do we have a future?  If “Yes,” then what ways of continual reformation are we going to take so that we are continuing to speak to those who come in our doors and who join our community, in their language and with words that they are looking to hear?  If “No”, then what steps do we have to take so that we can meet our end as a congregation with dignity, cherishing our history but having no future in this place?  Knox, Camlachie, has already made that decision, and they will be closing their doors at the end of this calendar year.  The members of the congregation, however, have already decided which other congregations they are going to attend, where they’re going to throw their time and their energies until their final “jobs” are done.

What are we doing here?  Our NOW Ministry had what I thought was a very profitable meeting last Tuesday evening, and there are going to be some things coming out to you, the congregation, in the next few weeks and months that we hope will be gateways into bigger things, as we reach out deeper into ourselves, and then try to reach out into our community and into our world.  They’re changes, new things, things we haven’t done before, and yet their purpose is clear:  help us to see ourselves and everyone around us as children of God, and to prompt us to act and not just observe, to move and not just be seen, to love and not just be loved.

Our job is to reach out to people with the love of Jesus Christ, to speak with the grace of Christ, and to live lives that show out that love and that grace in ways that are visible and unmistakeable.  How we do it is less important to figure out than that we do it.  In old ways or new ways, what we do needs to be working us towards that goal, not just existing for the sake of existing.

Amen.